It was scary.

I was engaged to moderate a “talk back” on ethics and the issues raised in the British drama “A Number” last night. I may write about the play here later: it is an ethics story involving a failed father who sends his disturbed son away and replaces him with a clone, thus providing the father with a “do-over.” One of the main issues we discussed was whether the father evoked any sympathy as he tried to cope with the serial disasters his conduct had triggered, including the original son murdering his clone.

After the discussion, I was chatting with audience members as they filed out of the the theater. An elderly woman, her face flushed and contorted in anger, came up to me and said, “I completely agree with you that the father is a sociopath. He reminded me of Trump! I wanted to go up on stage and strangle him!” By the end of her statement, she was almost shouting.

“Thanks for coming!” I told her.

The character of the father has absolutely no resemblance to Donald Trump in any respect, not attitudes, actions, manner, appearance…nothing.

It’s not enough that Kamala Harris deliberately placed on the ballot to be elected one heartbeat from the Presidency a Democratic governor , Tim Walz, who has been lying about his military combat record for more than 20 years. (Well, that was just “bad grammar”…). Nor that Richard Blumenthal, the senior United States Senator from Connecticut, also a Democrat, was cheerfully elected by Connecticut voters in 2010 (and re-elected in 2016 and 2022) despite repeatedly lying about being a Vietnam war veteran. For “Wait, there’s more!”…Wes Moore to be precise, the Democratic governor of Maryland.

Moore, shown above as he gave a highlighted speech for the Harris-Walz ticket at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago (he did not have a piece of the application for a prestigious White House fellowship in which he lied about receiving a Bronze Star hovering over his head, though) has been dispatched by the Harris campaign as a surrogate to defend Walz on cable television! What a good choice! After all, who better to try to rationalize lying about military service than someone who has done it himself!

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Ugh. I meant to include this in the previous post.

In September of 2019, Kamala Harris, then a Senator, wrote to Twitter on official Senate stationery that it should censor then-President Trump. CNN’s Jake Tapper challenged her on the suggestion. (She also tweeted that position.) “You wrote to Twitter and the CEO Jack Dorsey and asked him to take away the president’s Twitter handle. How is that not a violation of free speech? The President has the same rights that you have, that I have, how would that not be a slippery slope where they have to ban half of the people on Twitter?”

Harris’s totalitarian reply: “A corporation has obligations. Their Terms of Use dictate who receives the privilege of speaking on that platform, and who does not. And Donald Trump has clearly violated the Terms of Use, and there should be a consequence for that. Revoke someone’s privilege, because they have not lived up to the advantages of the privilege.”

There’s a Harris “value” for you, and the Biden Administration’s “value” as well. When the government applies pressure on a corporation to ban a political figure’s speech, indeed a sitting President’s speech as he seeks re-election, the “privilege” of communicating with the public on social media becomes a right being infringed by the government. Does Harris believe freedom of speech is a right or a privilege? That’s a “values” question Dana Bash should have asked Harris.

Nah. Too hard. She might have flubbed it.

“My values have not changed.”

—-Kamala Harris last night, repeating an obviously memorized response to anticipated questions by CNN’s Dana Bash about the many policy flip-flops she has executed since becoming the Democratic Party nominee.

This mantra was repeated three times in various forms, once prefaced by “let’s be clear.” To me the statement makes it clear that Harris’s “values” don’t include integrity or honesty. (I know: we already knew that.) Like her spectacular pretzelism of simultaneously running on “change” while maintaining that the Biden Administration she is part of has been all aces, this weasel-phrase is another transparently devious device to have it both ways.

Read her exchange with Bash about her sudden embrace of fracking. It makes no sense, especially in light of her later response that “her values have not changed” regarding the environment and that she still supports the Green New Deal, which mandates banning fracking.

A public official with consistent, sincerely held values does not and can not reverse herself on major issues unless significant new information and evidence has changed the problem. The significant new information that has caused Harris to flip-flop like the Flying Wallendas is polling that tell her that her previous positions on those issues will cost her votes. The values that have not changed are Harris’s ambition and her willingness to say and do anything to be elected. Those are not ethical values.

[I want to mention here that I took a break to have a cup of coffee and heard on the DirecTV NewsMix Channel that Trump and Vance are “pouncing” on Harris’s values line. This is why people accuse me of following Fox News talking points. Hey, if others come to the same conclusion I do, that just speaks well for them; it doesn’t mean I needed their help to figure it out.]

More on the interview:

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In New York City, close to one million bus riders, about one out of every two passengers, board buses without paying. The loss of revenue for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has reached a critical stage, and yet the city has yet to do anything about it, because it doesn’t know what to do. It may be too late.

New York’s fare evasion problem is by far the worst in the U.S. and among the worst of any major city in the world. The Wuhan virus freakout, as it did to so many other aspects of our economy, culture and society, made the situation worse, in part because the city had the brilliant idea that it would help get through the lockdown to make bus rides free. People don’t easily go back to paying for what they have been told they can have for nothing.

This, ladies and germs, is cultural rot and ethics collapse. In 2022, the transit authority lost $315 million because of bus fare evasion and $285 million as a result of subway turnstile jumpers, according to a 2023 report commissioned by the M.T.A. Taxpayers foot the bill for the freeloaders, naturally.

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From the London Times (Pointer: Ann Althouse):

“Carlsbad, a surfing hot spot near San Diego, has decided to prohibit people from lighting up inside apartments, condos and other shared buildings where multiple families live. From January residents will not be able to smoke or vape cannabis and nicotine products indoors or on balconies, porches and decks. The law does not apply to single-family homes or hotels and motels…At least 84 of California’s 483 municipalities — including Beverly Hills, Cupertino and Pasadena — have enacted similar bans in multi-family private residences, according to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation…Many residents in Carlsbad said the smoking ban would improve public health while making housing more pleasant despite concerns over how it will be enforced. Due to limited resources police will not enforce the law, but landlords and other tenants will be able to take legal action against anyone smoking indoors.”

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Meta Platforms CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told Congress this week that the Biden administration “repeatedly pressured” his company in 2021 to censor content related to the Wuhan virus, including posts by mere mortal Americans.

In response to questions from the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg confirmed that the Biden administration tried to censor his social media company and therefore probably the others as well.

“There’s a lot of talk right now, about how the U.S. government interacts with companies like Meta, and I want to be clear about our position,” Zuckerberg said in a letter to the committee. “Our platforms are for everyone — we’re about promoting speech and helping people connect in a safe and secure way.” 

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